On Monday Penny and I went to Eastbourne for a Terry Pratchett book signing. It was quite a pleasant affair, and due to a combination of some forward planning and blind luck we not only had a relatively short queuing time, but also by some fluke ended up right at the front of the queue! This meant that Terry, resplendent in his huge, black trademark fedora, was still relaxed and happy to chat.

And now heres the gossip Terry let slip to Penny that there is a good chance of a Hogfather movie coming out for next Christmas! I havent found mention of it elsewhere on the net yet.

Me, I didnt get any extra gossip, but he did mock my battered, tattered, dog-eared, water stained paperback copy of Good Omens. He wrote an encouragement to burn the mess inside and then shoved the offending thing away from him in disgust with his pen. See, he has to be nice to everyone that comes to these things, but he chose to be rude about me and how Ive treated my book. I fill strangely privileged.

Ive now also half-finished the new book that brought about this signing,Thud!. Its a Guards/Vimes story set in Ankh-Morpork, which suits me just fine. My favourite characters have always been Vimes and Vetinari. Im enjoying it quite a lot so far. It has some unsubtle references to pointless conflicts between two groups of beliefs and races for current affairs fans, and an equally unsubtle dig atThe Da Vinci Code. So far so good and Ill post a fuller review once Ive finished it.

Terry also released a childrens book calledWheres my cow? which ties intoThud!, but it was rather pants. Not very well done at all, and a somewhat cynical attempt to make an extra stack of cash that will probably succeed.

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Well, I did warn you about what was coming next!

First, an addendum to the last post. I was in Eindhoven Airport, went to the bar and asked the barman for a beer (in English). He asked whether I wanted a pint, but when I declined and asked for a regular sized beer (regular for the Netherlands that is) he responded with “Oh Im sorry sir, I mistook you for English. I do apologise.” I was actually speechless for a second there…

I have received word that my replacement at my former place of employment has resigned. She lasted all of a month. Well, less than that really. She worked there for a week (my last week at the company), signed off sick in week two, was on holiday in week 3, came back for half a week and resigned. Apparently something about unreasonable expectations…

I received quite a shock the other day when I checked my bank account and found I had a lot more in there than I was expecting. No, it wasnt because I was uncharacteristically frugal this month, but that my employer had mistakenly added a big bunch of cash into my account, equivalent to about a months salary. After getting over the shock, I enquired into it, had the error rectified and the money will be returned. That was undoubtedly the right thing to do, but I was certainly left with the guilty thought… Would anyone have noticed if I hadnt reported it? It would have secured my immediate move out of Aldershot. I could have gone house hunting and paid a cash deposit this very weekend just gone. I dont (entirely) regret returning the money, but Im going to be left with that lingering thought for some time.

Coming Next: The man, the hat, the book and the gossip

Land of Milk and Coffee

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Oct 182005
 

Last Thursday night I flew out to the Netherlands, for a day of meetings on Friday. Quite a painless trip, though there was an interesting innovation at Heathrow Airport. There was a strange cubicle next to the security scanners with a sign next to it proclaiming: “You may be randomly selected to help test our new full body scanner. If you refuse you will be subjected to a full body search by hand.” Sounds pretty ominous. I don’t know what technology the scanner was based around, but it does remind me of the body scanners used in Total Recall.

On the topic of security, while the machine-readable numbers were scanned from my passport by customs, I wondered what the passport number is checked against. A list of people forbidden to travel? A list of known criminals? And what happens to the information that I passed through Heathrow customs on that particular date? Do they retain that information? And to what end?

Eindhoven reminded me of Rotterdam in miniature. A small-ish, modern industrial town with the odd old building thrown in randomly here and there, but nothing cohesive. Nice enough though, and well kept. The hotel was very nice indeed and I wish I’d known earlier so I could have brought swimming trunks. Not to swim, of course, but merely to lounge around in the jacuzzi!

The meetings the next day went pretty much as expected, though the afternoon was an eye-opener. I wasn’t really that familiar with the operations of the nuclear pharmaceutical industry, but I certainly am now. I got to see a particle accelerator, I wore the white coat, over-shoes and hair net so I could enter a semi-clean area, and I had my radioactive dosage tested after walking around the manufacturing areas. It was all fairly awe-inspiring.

As was the coffee machine in the office. Instead of your more typical coffee machine which churned out weak instant coffee, this one had a big batch of coffee beans. When you made your choice of coffee, it grounds the beans and prepared wonderful coffee of the utmost freshness. Bliss! At lunchtime though, everyone scorned the coffee for the other Dutch national drink. Milk. I’m always amazed how slender the Dutch are, considering all the dairy products they consume every day. Full fat milk with every meal, cheese, yoghurts, yoghurt drinks etc. Every single day! No wonder they’re the tallest nation in the world!

So, at the end of the working day, I was shipped back over to Eindhoven airport. Amusingly, the drop off zone in front of the airport was called the ‘Kiss & Drop’ zone, but I made sure I stayed at least an arms length away from the taxi driver.

Coming next: A general mish-mash of events, occurrences and thoughts.

 

I’ve got a stack of goings-on to blog to cover the last few days, in a spell-binding tale (in my head at least) involving radioactivity, celebrities and money.

 

But since that will take some time, just a quick announcement that I managed to fix user registration on Endless Games at the weekend. It should all work now. If it doesn’t, please let me know. There are still a few tweaks outstanding, but nothing that should inhibit use too much.

 

So if people could please register and test everything, maybe make the odd forum post, I’d appreciate it.

Oct 132005
 

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Film | New James Bond set to be unveiled: “The mystery over which actor will become the new James Bond is finally nearing an end, with the next spy star due to be unveiled on Friday.
Film fans will discover whether Layer Cake actor Daniel Craig has been chosen to take over from Pierce Brosnan, as widely predicted in the press. “

I quite liked Daniel Craig in Layer Cake, so I think that could work well…

 

Workshops should be renamed to work churches. After all, you don’t buy into anything and you can only pray that you get something productive out of it! Which is what I’m going to be doing all day today.

I had a wander around Amersham last night, it’s not a bad little town. Decent library (huge graphic novel collection, though their internet computers didn’t allow you FTP access. Grrr…), an indoor climbing wall and a Pizza Express. And in contrast to Aldershot, the local Bargain Booze has no full-time security staff and the local kids are at least polite when they ask you to buy booze for them and don’t hurl abuse at you when you refuse. A seeming lack of pubs though…

The Quill Awards completed last night. Some of the highlights are that the latest Harry Potter won Book of the Year and Best Children’s Chapter Book. Gaiman’s 1602 won best Graphic Novel (still not read that one) and the most amusing title for me is the winner of the SciFi/Fantasy/Horror category (it’s all one thing you know!) which is ‘The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror’ by Christopher Moore. The rest of the winners are here.

Two interesting links

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Oct 112005
 

A couple of interesting toys Ive found. The first one is the GMail Drive shell extension. GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Gmail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium. [It] creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag’n'drop files to.

Definitely a unique idea, though utterly pointless unless you have quite a fast net connection. My ideal implementation of it would be to have the shell extension work from a USB drive, that way you could have direct file access to everything youve stored in your Gmail account.

Dont have a Gmail account? Let me know, and if I know you, you can have an invite!

As for the other thing, its more of a clever technique rather than a toy. The idea is to use Flickr to store files using steganography. According to this article, Flickr isnt doing any checking for embedded files. The upside is that you can use your Flickr account for excess storage or covertly passing files. Im sure it wont be long before Flickr inhibits this though. Firstly, image file sizes will shoot up and secondly steganographic methods are used by organised crime groups who encrypt files, embed them in images and then send the images. The image looks identical and its possible to embed in such a way that the information doesnt show in an images EXIF tag. Voila, the encrypted file is invisible.

Oct 112005
 

BBC NEWS | Politics | Protest over religious hate Bill: “Hundreds of Christians are protesting outside Parliament against a proposed law which would ban incitement to religious hatred.
The demonstration by a coalition of groups is timed to coincide with the second reading of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill in the Lords.
Opponents say it will damage freedom of speech and worsen community relations. “

I agree with their protest too. Not because of a vague yearning for true freedom to say whatever you want, but because the law cannot be worded in a way that allows it to be properly restricted to those areas it is intended for. It’s all very well for Clarke to say that it won’t be used for anything dubious, but it wasn’t too long ago that an old man was restricted from re-entering the Labour Party conference after a one-word heckle. The police restricted his movements on the basis of anti-terror legislation.
So you can’t tell me that laws will never be abused if they are badly worded and created as a kneejerk reaction.

Oct 112005
 

QOOP flickr Photo Printer

What a neat idea! If you have a Flickr account, QOOP will take the pictures of the sets you’re interested in and print them into a hardcopy, bound book for you. You can choose whether you want thumbnails, one, two or four pictures per page and the price is based on how many pages you’re going to end up with.

I’ve got another large batch of pictures to upload one weekend, but once I’ve done that I’ll be very tempted to do this. After all, for the 200 odd pics I have right now, it would only cost me $18 to have a permanent hardcopy of all those pictures.

Oct 112005
 

First night in a local B&B last night and the combined joys of an en-suite power shower, getting up while its daylight and being given freshly ground coffee with my breakfast has really set me up for the day! Now I can stop drinking that ridiculously weak machine coffee that Ive been trying to con my body with. WEAK!

It seems the EG user registration still doesnt work; we seem to have a permissions issue. Dagnabit. Authors can still edit Encyclopaedia, News and Content, but you need a user account to post to the forum. Bobbins.

Im going to try and recreate the lost logo as well today.

Im really glad of my USB memory stick. Not just for carting my files around, but Ive got Portable Sunbird on there too, so I always have my calendar with me. Just as well, considering I alternate between the clients computer, office computer, my computer, Pennys computer, library computer etc. Its just a shame that I dont get to spend more than a few minutes at my own home computer anymore.

Ive found out that the local library is open until 8pm on Tuesdays so Ill head there after work. Ill try and use their computers and maybe read some. Itll keep me out of the pub for a little while…

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